Compare the Chip. _ashawiwi-sitagon_, "a place from which water runs
two ways," a dividing ridge or portage _between_ river courses. Owen's
Geological Survey of Wisconsin, etc., p. 312.]

5. ASHIM, is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for 'fountain.' It
denoted a _spring_ or brook from which water was obtained for
drinking. In the Abnaki, _asiem nebi_, 'il puise de l'eau;' and
_ned-a'sihibe_, 'je puise de l'eau, _fonti vel fluvio_.' (Rasles.)

_Winne-ashim-ut_, 'at the good spring,' near Romney Marsh, is now
Chelsea, Mass. The name appears in deeds and records as Winnisimmet,
Winisemit, Winnet Semet, etc. The author of the 'New English Canaan'
informs us (book 2, ch. 8), that "At _Weenasemute_ is a water, the
virtue whereof is, to cure barrennesse. The place taketh his name of
that fountaine, which signifieth _quick spring_, or _quickning
spring_. Probatum."

_Ashimuit_ or _Shumuit_, an Indian village near the line between
Sandwich and Falmouth, Mass.,--_Shaume_, a neck and river in Sandwich
(the _Chawum_ of Capt. John Smith?),--_Shimmoah_, an Indian village on
Nantucket,--may all have derived their names from springs resorted to
by the natives, as was suggested by the Rev. Samuel Deane in a paper
in _Mass. Hist. Collections_, 2d Series, vol. x. pp. 173, 174.

6. MATTAPPAN, a participle of _mattappu_ (Chip. _namatabi_), 'he sits
down,' denotes a 'sitting-down place,' or, as generally employed in
local names, _the end of a portage_ between two rivers or from one arm
of the sea to another,--where the canoe was launched again and its
bearers re-embarked. Rale translates the Abnaki equivalent,
_mata[n]be_, by 'il va au bord de l'eau,--a la greve pour
s'embarquer,' and _meta[n]beniganik_, by 'au bout de dela du portage.'

_Mattapan-ock_, afterwards shortened to _Mattapan_, that part of
Dorchester Neck (South Boston) where "the west country people were set
down" in 1630,[77] may have been so called because it was the end of a
carrying place from South Bay to Dorchester Bay, across the narrowest
part of the peninsula, or--as seems highly probable--because it was
the temporary 'sitting-down place' of the new comers. Elsewhere, we
find the name evidently associated with _portage_.

[Footnote 77: Blake's Annals of Dorchester, p. 9; Winthrop's Journal,
vol. i. p. 28.]

On Smith's Map of Virginia, one '_Mattapanient_' appears as the name
of the northern fork (now the _Mattapony_) of Pamaunk (York) River;
another (_Matt